Doug McDermott's value to Creighton goes way beyond court

Doug McDermott of the Creighton Bluejays reacts after a dunk during their game against the Providence in Omaha, Neb.(Photo: Eric Francis, Getty Images)

Story Highlights

Creighton basketball brings in about $5.5 million annually and much of that is a credit to McDermott

McDermott is the front-runner to win player of the year while leading the Bluejays to a second-place Big East finish

McDermott is a two-time all-american and led Creighton to the NCAA tournament the past few years

OMAHA — "A handoff, Gibbs, a give-back, a look for Artino, they look for McDermott. He's outside the arc. McDermott gets a screen. For three thousand! Yessir!" The voice of John Bishop, Creighton's play-by-play man, rang over the radio broadcast.

There was brief silence. In the background, the public address announcer told an already deafening crowd that Creighton star Doug McDermott had just gone "for threeeeee thousand" in his illustrious career.

"He has done it! History has been made in Omaha, Nebraska!" Bishop shouted.

Moments later, Doug McDermott's father called a timeout. He could do that, of course, because he's also Doug's coach. Doug buried his head into Greg's shoulder.

Doug McDermott scored points No. 2,999, 3,000 and 3,001 all at once, a 3-pointer from NBA range with 11:27 left during Saturday's game against Providence. The likely National Player of the Year finished the game with a career-high 45 points, the perfect ending to a Senior Night for the most prolific player of this era.

During his four years as Bluejay, McDermott has scored 3,011 career points, seventh on the all-time Division I men's basketball scoring list. He's done that by shooting 55% from the field, and it's put him in position to become a first-team All-American for the third consecutive season, the first player to earn that distinction since Patrick Ewing and Wayman Tisdale in 1985.

(Photo: Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports)

Creighton has long boasted a deep basketball tradition and a loyal following in the Missouri Valley Conference — but there was a shift in the past four years. The already large home crowds in this city of 420,000 grew bigger and more boisterous. The Bluejays won games and kept winning, amassing a 104-36 record and reaching the NCAA tournament's round of 32. Last spring, they were tapped to join the Big East, drastically increasing their exposure and revenue.

It's crazy to credit McDermott for Creighton's recent, swift rise to national prominence, but it's even crazier not to.

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Measuring a college athlete's true value can be difficult — and somewhat uncomfortable, considering it stands in stark contrast to the bedrock of amateurism on which the NCAA stands.

But in McDermott's case, it's relatively simple to calculate a figure. Jason Belzer, a sports attorney and Forbes magazine contributor, suggests adding two numbers: McDermott's impact on the team measured by scoring proportion and NCAA tournament appearance payout.

Creighton basketball brought in about $5.5 million in 2012-13, according to the Equity in Athletics Disclosure database. Typically, one would divide that number by 13 scholarship players to determine how much each is worth — but McDermott has contributed more than his fair share to the program. McDermott has scored approximately 28.1% of the Bluejays' points since the fall of 2010; crediting him with 28% of Creighton's four-year total basketball revenue would mean that he has accounted for $6.2 million.

The revenue numbers include a significant uptick in ticket sales during McDermott's career — Creighton's attendance rose from 13,507 his freshman season to 17,155 and climbing the past two seasons.

Assuming Creighton would not have made the NCAA tournament and advanced to the round of 32 the past two seasons without him, one also can attribute the four NCAA tournament units awarded to him. That's about $1.5 million per unit ($250,000 per year, over six years).

Belzer argues that the financial value McDermott has brought to Creighton starts at $12.2 million over his four-year career, at least in tangible numbers, and goes up from there.

One could also speculate that McDermott has brought in millions of dollars in media exposure to both his school and the Big East this season as a potential national Player of the Year, and that a deep NCAA tournament run this month could net millions more. An Elite Eight appearance alone would earn $6 million (four NCAA tournament units).

"He might be, in financial terms at least, an outlier (because of) the fact that he stayed for four years," Belzer said. "His financial impact at the University this year at least is no different from, say, a great All-American or National Player of the Year. But the fact that he's been there for so many years, that he's taken them to multiple NCAA tournaments, that really puts his value at a different echelon."

(Photo: Dave Weaver, USA TODAY Sports)

Add in part of Creighton's share of the Big East's media rights contract — the 10-team league signed a 12-year deal with FOX worth approximately $500 million — and the figures start to look astronomical.​ It's hard to argue that McDermott played no role in the conference upgrade, even when considering all of the other factors involved.

"I don't know why the Big East chose us over a lot of other schools — I've never been told specifically," Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen said. "The overall athletic program, our fan support, the facilities, but certainly you could say if we didn't have the success in the previous three years in men's basketball that we've had, maybe we wouldn't have gotten in. I think it was an accumulation, but certainly our men's basketball success in the last three or four years helped."

Said Greg McDermott: "A potential Player of the Year candidate (plus) all of those things, it created a perfect storm for us to be attractive enough to be selected."

Tom Shatel, a columnist at the Omaha World-Herald, wants to see Doug in bronze. He penned a column last week begging for Creighton to erect a statue, a way to not only commemorate but immortalize a player he called a "shooting star."

"What are the odds that there will be another player like McDermott, with his impact on the program and community, anytime soon? If ever?" Shatel wrote. "Let's not kid ourselves that Creighton's emergence as a national name could have happened without him. The instant credibility that comes with a former mid-major finishing second in the Big East in its first year doesn't happen without No. 3."

***

Consider how close Creighton came to not getting Doug McDermott — and not having all of this.

If Creighton coach Dana Altman not left for Oregon. If Greg McDermott not been on somewhat tenuous footing at Iowa State and open to jumping to Creighton. If Doug McDermott signed some place other than Northern Iowa — his father's alma mater and former program — and if UNI coach Ben Jacobson had not let him out of his commitment there.

"It was really an easy decision to get Greg," Rasmussen said. "The luck was two things. One was timing. If we'd have done it earlier, we'd have probably gotten Doug. But if we'd done it any later, we probably wouldn't have. … The other luck was Doug. I thought Doug would be a very good player. All-American? First-team All-American? Maybe college player of the year? No.

"I thought he could be an all-Missouri Valley Conference player — which is accurate — I just set the ceiling a little low."

(Photo: Dave Weaver, USA TODAY Sports)

So did most. In high school, McDermott played alongside Harrison Barnes, the No. 1 recruit in the 2010 class. A who's who of college basketball coaches saw their team play plenty of times. None of the high-major coaches offered McDermott a scholarship.

So he followed his father to Creighton, where McDermott's career blossomed first in the Missouri Valley Conference, and now in the Big East. Both father and son have spoken many times about trying to separate their coach-player relationship from their father-son one as best they can, at least during the season. "It's been relatively easy," Greg McDermott said, "because Doug wants to be one of the guys."

"They've gotten a lot closer," said Theresa McDermott, Greg's wife and Doug's mother. "When Doug was growing up and in high school, Greg was a college coach and was gone a lot — a lot, a lot. They spent so much time together these last four years, more than they did the prior 14 or so years."

And every once in awhile — actually, a bit more frequently this season, considering all the milestones Doug has reached — Greg stops to reflect on how special this experience has been.

He pulls his son aside and tells him how much he appreciates what's happening, how much he's cherishing their time together, "just so he knows that what he's accomplished and what this team is accomplishing, I'm not so wrapped up in the daily grind that I've lost sight of that," Greg said.

***

In this one-and-done era of college basketball, so many young players are in a rush to get to the NBA. They don't want to stick around for extra years in college, risking injuries or the chance that their draft stock will dip as their game gets picked apart.

But Doug McDermott has turned down the chance to go pro early twice, while adding different dimensions to his game. He's improved his in-between game. The 6-8 forward is hitting his fadeaway jumper more consistently. He's added to his post play. He's worked on his defense and lateral movement. He honed skills and grew his confidence last summer alongside NBA stars at a Team USA mini-camp.

And his draft stock rose. He's projected to be a lottery pick in June's NBA draft.

"He made the decision to come back to school," Greg McDermott said. "He had a target on his back, a new league that obviously wanted a piece of him, to see if he could do it against another level of athlete. For Doug to prove that he could — by adding things to his game — is really a credit to him.

"He's a piece of this puzzle that fits very well with the dynamics of our team."

Creighton's high-powered offense is a thing of beauty when shots are falling; the closest it came to perfection this season was in its pair of wins against No. 3 Villanova with its sensational perimeter attack (21 made 3-pointers against the Wildcats the first meeting) and efficient shooting (60% shooting from the field in both games combined). That opens the floor for Doug McDermott, whom Villanova coach Jay Wright called "as complete a player as I've ever seen."

"He's got the skill, but he's on another level in terms of basketball IQ than anybody we've got in college basketball," Wright said. "Larry Bird used to be like that. But I don't know if there's anyone who was that intelligent on the post and on the perimeter."

Said Georgetown coach John Thompson III: "He's impossible to guard because he can score from every position on the court. … It's impossible to stop him. You just have to hope that he misses, and he doesn't do that too often."

This season McDermott is averaging 26.5 points (best in Division I) and 7.2 rebounds per game, while shooting 52.2% from the field and 44.7% from beyond the arc.

He's doing it as the most prolific walk-on in college basketball history — given the designation this season after three scholarship seasons because senior guard Grant Gibbs was granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA in the offseason. All parties benefited; Gibbs got a scholarship, McDermott got a longtime teammate back who averages 4.0 assists per game, and McDermott also got an off-campus apartment.

"I was pushing for it just because of that," he said, smiling.

The only down side? McDermott can hardly leave that apartment this season without being mobbed by fans. He's recognized and stopped anywhere and everywhere, though he's happy to sign autographs and take photos. He knows it's part of the drill. "He's hit superstar status in Omaha," Gibbs said.

"I try to have fun with it, because next year, it's not going to be the same," McDermott said. "I'm not going to be Kevin Durant or LeBron James. That's what it feels like, honestly, in this city. We don't have a pro team. We feel like we are the pro team."

Just as Durant and James will surely go down in NBA history someday, McDermott's name will forever be etched all over the college basketball record books. In recent weeks he's scooted past names like Oscar Robertson, Danny Manning and Larry Bird on the all-time scoring list.

"Doug is a throwback, not just as a player but to the days of the four-year star," ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla said. "The guy who becomes his own brand. The Grant Hill. The Patrick Ewing. The Chris Mullin. The guy that plays all four years. The guy that we watched grow up before our eyes, from a precocious freshman playing for his dad to finishing up his career as one of the all-time greatest college scorers in history.

"He reminds us of how basketball used to be before the year of the one-and-done player."

In Omaha, they'll never forget that.​

***

Nicole Auerbach, a national college basketball reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @NicoleAuerbach.

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